WORLD'S END

The little staff of official Americans were of course well looked after; not merely sheltered and warmed and fed, but provided with every sort of technical assistance: an elaborate courier service, a post office, a telephone and telegraph service of their own, a printing plant, a wireless station which could send a message all the way around the world in the seventh part of a second. Something like a million and a half dollars had been expended to guarantee their security and efficiency. While the President was away on his tours, the experts busied themselves preparing what was known as the "Black Book," an outline of the territorial settlements which the Americans would recommend to the President. It was highly confidential, and many persons wanted very much to know what was in it.

This had the effect of intensifying the siege being laid to the Hotel Crillon. Not a physical siege, of course, for the place was well guarded, and you couldn't get in without a pass; but a diplomatic siege, a social siege, waged with the ancient weapons of elegance and prestige, of courtesy and tact for which Paris was famed. Did anybody know a member of the American staff? And would it be possible to give the said member a dinner party, or invite him to tea, or to a salon, or to hear some music, or to see some pictures? The American professors had a hard time making excuses to all the people who wanted to tell their national troubles. The professors were disposed to be reserved, especially at the outset; bearing in mind that they were not negotiators, but advisers to negotiators.

Lanny Budd was only a semi-official person; and, besides, he had connections in Paris of a sort which few others enjoyed. Professor Alston couldn't very well expect him not to meet his own mother and father, or the friends whom he had known since childhood. And of course the effect was to constitute him a "pipeline" into the Crillon. A great many persons found out that Madame Detaze, widow of a French painter, had a son who was a translator or something to the American staff; so at once Madame Detaze became a popular hostess. "Oh, Madame, I have heard so much about that charming son of yours! So brilliant, so wise beyond his years! I'd love to meet him - couldn't you arrange it? Oh, right away, within the next few days!"

Nothing of that surprised the mother; she had always known that her son was all that! So Lanny would be asked to meet dreamers and propagandists, fortune hunters and impoverished aristocrats from places whose names he had to look up in the atlas -Kurdistan and Croatia, Iraq and Mingrelia, Cilicia which must not be confused with Silesia or Galicia, and Slovenia which must be distinguished from Slovakia. Earnest strangers would appeal in the name of President Wilson's doctrine of "self-determination of all peoples"; and Lanny would take their stories to the experts at the Crillon - and like as not would learn that these same people were busily engaged in oppressing some other people, even perhaps killing them wholesale!

II

Beauty called the hotel, saying: "Lanny, I've just met the most delightful young English officer - he's been in Arabia for years, even before the war, and tells such interesting stories about it. You know, they wear robes, and gallop across the desert on beautiful horses, and take long journeys on camels. They say he has an Arabian sheik or something with him, and he's going to bring him to Emily's for tea. Couldn't you run over?"

So Lanny, who for the last six hours had been working without a break at making abstracts of several French reports on conditions in the Ukraine, said yes, and in the drawing room of Mrs. Chattersworth's town house he met a figure out of the Arabian Nights: a man of thirty or so, with a mild face, long and thin, such as painters have imagined for Jesus Christ. He had a black beard and mustache and very beautiful dark eyes, and wore a robe of soft gray silk edged with scarlet, and a four-cornered turban with a hood having a flowered pattern. His father was Sherif of Mecca and King of the Hejaz - at least he said the British called his father "king," but it was silly, for the father traced his ancestry back to the Prophet, more than twelve hundred years ago, and what was any "king" in the world compared to that?

The Emir Feisal, as this young man was called, spoke no English; what he said was translated by the officer who was his companion and friend. The latter's name was Lawrence, and the two of them had been fighting the Turks and Germans all over the sun-scorched deserts of Arabia, and in the end had swept them out of the country. Colonel Lawrence was about thirty-one and seemed even younger, having the manner of a gay schoolboy. He was stocky, with sandy complexion much burned, and very bright blue eyes. He and his friend had a keen sense of humor and exchanged many jokes during the translating.